Denis Vrain-Lucas
Denis Vrain -Lucas ( 1818, † 1881) was a successful forger. He became known in particular through a collection of more than 27,000 alleged autographs of famous people, which he sold to the mathematician Michel Chasles.
Life
Denis Vrain -Lucas worked in Châteaudun as office manager of a notary's office, before he took a job at a bookstore in Paris. There he learned in contact with Marcel Roux on the value of old manuscripts and was an imposter named Letellier, who made his money with invented pedigrees for the nouveau riche in the art of aging parchment, carried. In the National Library in the Rue Richelieu, where he passed himself off as an archivist and paleograph, he stole not only empty parchment pages from old books, but also made use of documents which enabled him to take on the role of important historical personalities and writings of their hand to forge. The customers for these alleged autographs were respected bookseller, but especially the mathematician Michel Chasles, he apparently had known since 1851. This bought him from gradually more than 27,000 letters, which should come from various celebrities.
In one of these letters, the allegedly Blaise Pascal wrote to Isaac Newton, Vrain -Lucas was, however, Pascal discover the law of gravity. Chasles made the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1867 about his " discovery " message and triggered fierce debates. Eventually, however, a biographer of Newton pointed out that the recipients of the letter in 1654, to which the letter was dated only eleven years old and thus perhaps not have been the appropriate addressee for Pascal and its alleged discovery would be. Then handed Michel Chasles, the Vrain -Lucas also forged letters of Julius Caesar and even Lazarus is said to have bought his collection of autographs alleged Florentine experts for review. The mathematician should have, however, to the authenticity of the writings that he referred from Vrain -Lucas, believed and not displayed him as 3000 prepaid writings did not arrive with him. Vrain -Lucas was arrested in 1869 and brought to justice.
He also admitted to have falsified the letters, however, insisted on it, they are nevertheless been worth the money and he had only acted for the good of the Fatherland. For the amusement of those present the judge had read some of the products of the forger during the process. Among them was a repentant letter of Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius, in which Pilate regretted the death of Christ, a letter of Vercingetorix at Pompey and a letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle, in which it proposed to the philosophers to study the local customs in Gaul. Furthermore, a love letter to Cleopatra Mark Antony was read. To understand the contents of the forged letters, was no problem, because Denis Vrain -Lucas had written one and all in French.
Vrain -Lucas had to serve for these acts a prison sentence of two years. When he was brought to jail, it was discovered that he had just been working on a document in which it was possible to keep the Sermon on the Mount in French Jesus.
He was arrested and convicted because he not only had falsified a pedigree for a Abbé Tochon, but plundered the buyer also again soon after his release from prison in 1872. 1876 was imposed on him for the theft of rare books as a repeat offender, a third sentence of four years. In 1881 he died of " dropsy ".